Single leaf with lively birds and grotesques from a sumptuously illuminated Cistercian Breviary, likely produced in Amiens at the end of the 13th century.

Anonymous Picard illuminator, A bifolium and two leaves from an illuminated Breviary for Cistercian use, in Latin [Picardy, perhaps Amiens, c.1290s] 

Single leaf with lively birds and grotesques from a sumptuously illuminated Cistercian Breviary, likely produced in Amiens at the end of the 13th century.

Single leaf c.160 x 110mm., 25 lines in two columns, ruled space: c.108 x 71mm, the text is from the Homiliary compiled by Paul the Deacon, rubrics in red, illuminated initials extending into margins, a bird and human-bird hybrids perched on top (margins slightly darkened) margin nibbled not affecting the text.

Provenance:

(1) The parent manuscript included the Office of St Firminus of Amiens, and it has been suggested it could have been made for the Cistercian nunnery of the Paraclete near Amiens.

(2) A substantial fragment of 128 leaves (including the present bifolium) was sold at Sotheby’s on 5 July 2005, lot 90, from which it was possible to confirm that the book was Cistercian, since it included the office of St Bernard of Clairvaux, with 12 lections, and those of the Cistercian Saints William of Bourges, Malachi, and Edmond of Pontigny.

(3) Inscriptions in 18th- and 19th-century hands indicated that by that time it was at Vouvray, east of Tours in the Loire valley.

(4) Leaves from this Breviary have appeared on the market since at least as early as 1995: Maggs, Bulletin, 20, nos 42-43 and Cat.1262, 1998, no 13; thirteen more were sold at Sotheby’s since 2001: one on 9 June, lot 10, and another on 6 December 2001, lot 2; two on 6 December 2005, lot 10; six on 29 June 2007, lot 4; one on 3 December 2013, lot 13; one on 7 July 2015, lot 14; and one on 23 May 2017, lot 4.